YouTube’s Kids App Is Coming Under Fire for Junk Food Ads

YouTube markets its YouTube Kids app as a safe space for kids online—a place where they won’t be exposed to all the different kinds of kid-inappropriate content the Internet serves up so efficiently. But two children’s advocacy groups are claiming that YouTube Kids is exposing impressionable young minds to another kind of pernicious influence.

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and the Center for Digital Democracy say that they’ve found hundreds of commercials and promotional videos of junk food products on the app from the likes of Coca-Cola, Nestle, and Hershey. In a complaint filed today, the groups are calling on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate YouTube Kids.

“Far from being a safe place for kids to explore, YouTube Kids is awash with food and beverage marketing that you won’t find on other media platforms for young children,” the CCFC’s Josh Golin said in a statement.

Google-owned YouTube says that all ads in the Kids app are pre-approved by YouTube’s policy team, ensuring that they adhere to the company’s standards, which prohibit ads that show food and beverages. But screenshots provided in the complaint show what appear to be ads, promotional videos, or videos with product placement selling Reese’s peanut butter cups, Crunch bars, Hershey Kisses, Nutella, and Pop Tarts.

These screenshots of a Crunch commercial found on YouTube Kids were included in the complaint filed today by the Center for Digital Democracy and Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood. YouTube Kids

“YouTube Kids prohibits paid advertising for all food and beverage brands. We also ask YouTube creators to disclose if their videos contain paid product placement or incentivized endorsements and we exclude those videos from the YouTube Kids app,” says a YouTube spokeswoman. “The app contains a wide-range of content, including videos with food-related themes, but these are not paid advertisements.” The spokeswoman adds that parents have the ability to turn off search functionality and restrict the app to a limited set of videos as well.

Launched in February, YouTube Kids is designed to offer videos for children under 12. The idea is that parents can park their kids and not have to worry about whether they’re watching anything objectionable.

The consumer groups first complained to the FTC about YouTube Kids’ advertising practices in April. The groups took issue with product placement-style ads in YouTube videos themselves that don’t disclose that a video creator is shilling a product. Unlike adults, the groups argue, young children likely wouldn’t be able to distinguish an ad from a regular video.

While there are established guidelines on the kinds of ads that can be served up during children’s programming on television, the Internet is (after all these years) still new territory as far as regulators are concerned. For the advocacy groups, that’s a problem as children are increasingly spending more and more time watching videos online. YouTube has said that users tend to spend 40 minutes on average on the site. For children, those 40 minutes could add up to a lot of ads.

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YouTube Returns to Pakistan After Three-Year Ban

Three years since the Pakistani government blocked YouTube, following the release of the anti-Islamic film “Innocence of Muslims,” the Middle Eastern country is relaunching the video platform, albeit with some caveats.

The new version will be heavily monitored by the Pakistani government, who will be able to request that any content they deem offensive be censored, Reuters reports. It’s not the first of these arrangements YouTube has made abroad, but it does represent a kind of moral conflict for YouTube’s parent company Google.

As the world’s biggest search engine, Google’s mission has always been to put the world’s knowledge at our fingertips. And yet, as the company looks to solidify its presence overseas, it’s finding that not all knowledge is welcome in all places. The video “Innocence of Muslims,” which led to riots and political upheaval in several Muslim countries, spurred the ban of YouTube not only in Pakistan, but also in countries like Iran and Sudan.

The new version of YouTube in Pakistan will allow the government to request that certain content be taken down. That does not, however, guarantee it will be taken down. In a statement to Reuters, a YouTube representative said the company will review each request to ensure the material is, in fact, banned under that country’s laws.

“We have clear community guidelines, and when videos violate those rules, we remove them,” the company told Reuters. “Where we have launched YouTube locally and we are notified that a video is illegal in that country, we may restrict access to it after a thorough review.”

Censorship online is always uncomfortable territory for Silicon Valley tech companies, which pride themselves on being outlets for freedom of expression. And yet, as their global footprint grows, these companies are increasingly being asked to grapple not only with censorship abroad, but also with concerns about terrorism at home, both of which require them to be the gatekeepers of free speech.

Google Pledges to Help Fight Bogus YouTube Copyright Claims—for a Few

Google has vowed to help YouTube creators fight back against phony copyright claims by offering legal protection to creators—at least, to a few of them.

Fred von Lohmann, copyright legal director at the company, wrote in a blog post today that Google will now help defend certain videos that fall under the fair use doctrine. “We are offering legal support to a handful of videos that we believe represent clear fair uses which have been subject to DMCA takedowns,” he wrote.

In the cases of content Google chooses to defend, he wrote, “We’ll keep the videos live on YouTube in the US, feature them in the YouTube Copyright Center as strong examples of fair use, and cover the cost of any copyright lawsuits brought against them.”

The first four videos Google is defending include a critical review of two video game trailers; a video debunking a UFO sighting posted by another YouTube user; a video in which two sixth grade girls testifying at an Ohio House of Representatives committee hearing were asked by state representatives to date their grandsons; and a video that included news clips of Rachel Dolezal. (You can view all four in the playlist embedded above.) The creators of each video have received DMCA notices in the past.

This sounds great for those few creators Google gets behind. But the new effort would still seem to leave many creators on their own when it comes to unfounded claims that their videos are in violation.

Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), web hosts are required to remove content posted by users if someone files a complaint alleging that the content infringes a copyright. If your work is taken down, you can file a counter-claim, but until the dispute is resolved, the content will remain offline. It’s a guilty-until-proven-innocent system that has led to abuse by copyright holders seeking to silence critics or cover up embarrassing mishaps. Creators also can fall victim to bizarre algorithmic accidents that result in non-infringing material being flagged. And because YouTube automates much of its copyright enforcement, as we’ve previously reported, many users have their work erroneously flagged as infringing.

In many cases, creators that receive takedown notices should be protected by fair use doctrine of copyright law, which holds that parts of copyrighted material can be reproduced for news reporting, commentary, criticism, parody, and other select reasons.

But Google’s current copyright protocol still relies heavily on an automated system called Content ID. As part of the Content ID program, copyright holders can upload works to YouTube, and the system scans for infringing matches. Videos that include even a small amount of infringing content are placed under the control of the copyright holder, who can collect advertising revenue from the video if they decide to let it remain online. Worse, YouTube allows the copyright holder to evaluate complaints of overstepping instead of fielding those complaints itself, meaning that if your fair use work gets caught up in the Content ID system, you have little recourse.

Google has a long way to go to fix its system, but copyright reform advocates welcomed today’s announcement. “It provides a useful signal to other users and the world as a whole as to what things constitute clear fair uses,” Sherwin Siy, a a vice president of legal affairs at the advocacy group Public Knowledge said in a statement.

YouTube Will Soon Find Out If People Really Want to Pay

After months of rumors, the world’s No. 1 Internet video destination finallyannounced its YouTube Red subscription service a week ago—and the new premium offering doesn’t sound half bad. For $9.99 a month, audiences can browse YouTube ad-free and get access to original programming from YouTube creators, save videos to watch offline, and play videos in the background on any mobile device.

The YouTube Red membership also works on the company’s recently launched Gaming app. During its launch, executives also clarified that Red can be thought of as interchangeable with a Google Play Music subscription (itself a $10 value). A YouTube executive also confirmed to WIRED that its upcoming podcast feature, which will soon live inside the Google Play hub, would also be part of the Red subscription service. In a way, the service is reminiscent of Amazon Prime, with its access to video, music, and e-books, though without the two-day shipping.

Of course, YouTube still must convince its massive billion-plus user base that subscription is the way to go after consuming it for free for years, a process that’s likely to be a bumpy road. To sweeten the deal, the company is offering a free one-month trial so new users can test the waters and start streaming Drake’s “Hotline Bling” and Adele’s “Hello” nonstop, without ads, even when they’re offline.

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